It seems like Donald Trump voters are starting to reach the ‘find out’ phase of his ‘f around’ second Presidency.
Back in October, I asked a bunch of Trump supporters why they were voting for him – and everyone had different reasons. But what they all had in common was a belief that he’d make the cost of living come down.
Which was weird, because his promises on reducing costs were a tiny part of his wild, freewheeling stump speeches – which were mostly about culture wars obsessions and demonising immigrants.
It’s happening quicker than I thought, but it seems like people are starting to realise that being mean to trans kids and Mexicans isn’t actually going to make eggs any cheaper.
So as the US stocks continue to tumble as a direct result of Trump’s policies, we’re starting to see a little bit of damage control coming from Trump and his team.
Elon Musk, on the other hand, is apparently too deep in the hole to do anything but dig.
Here’s a roundup of what they’ve done and said in the last 24 hours, and why it matters.
1. Everyone’s buying a Tesla to make Elon feel better
Donald Trump has pledged to buy a new Tesla after stocks in Elon Musk’s main company slumped by more than 15% on Monday alone.
The sell-off of Tesla shares was part of a wider hit to US tech stocks, with investors spooked about Trump’s tariff threats – more of which later.
But it’s not just that. Tesla shares have been on the decline since the end of last year – after a massive spike just after he helped Trump get elected.
Since December about $800 billion has been wiped off the value of Elon’s electric car maker, and the slump shows no sign of rallying.
Still, the Donald – and Fox News blowhard Sean Hannity – picking up a couple of Cybertrucks is sure to turn things around.
2. Trump says he’ll keep rounding up and deporting people he doesn’t agree with
Every time someone vaguely authoritarian comes to power, an old poem is almost always rolled out.
You know the one… “First they came for the communists…”
It’s been attributed to everyone from Ghandi to Anne Frank on poorly-made memes over the years, but “First They Came” was written by Martin Niemoller, a German pastor and anti-Communist who supported Hitler’s rise to power.
In fact, it’s used so often in situations that don’t really warrant it that over the years it’s lost a lot of its power. Which is a shame really, because it’s a perfect warning from history for what appears to be happening in the United States this week.
Over the weekend, plainclothes ICE officers arrived at the home of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist who helped lead a widely publicised protest encampment against Israel’s behaviour in Gaza at New York’s Columbia University.
They informed him that his student visa had been revoked and he was being deported. When his heavily pregnant wife told the officers he had permanent residency – a green card – they made a phone call and told him he was being arrested anyway and they’d work out the details later.
He was banged up briefly in New York, before being quietly whisked to Indiana for no adequately explained reason. A judge has since halted his deportation until an actual hearing can take place.
It’s the most public and incendiary move so far in Trump’s bid to boot out and/or imprison “agitators” who protest against Israel – which the administration see as tacit support for Hamas.
Despite having been charged with no crime, and there being no evidence presented of links to illegal groups, Khalil was branded a “terrorist sympathiser”.
It’s also a clear and unambiguous breach of the first amendment.
Still, due to the widespread conflation of protests against Israel and anti-Semitism, the story hasn’t sparked quite as much outrage as you might expect.
Khalil, whether you agree with or deplore with his message or methods, was exercising his right as a US permanent resident to protected speech, and was arrested, imprisoned and could be deported for it.
The White House has loudly crowed over his arrest, tweeting “SHALOM, MAHMOUD” from its official account.
And Trump himself issued the chilling warning that the incident is “the first arrest of many to come”.
Still, those warnings about Trump being a wannabe dictator were all a fuss about nothing, right?
3. STONKS
Now, shall we get back to the stock market?
In his first term, Trump was all about the stock market. He used it as one of his main barometers for whether he’d done the right or wrong thing, and constantly boasted about how good it was on his watch.
After years of growth, some $1.7 trillion has been wiped off the S&P 500 equity index. The Nasdaq-100 posted a trillion dollars had been wiped off its value yesterday.
Why? Tariffs. Even though Trump keeps pausing or delaying some of his 25% tax on imports from Mexico and Canada – and reciprocal tariffs on countries around the world – investors are simply losing confidence that the economy under Donald Trump is going to be the booming utopia they were promised.
On top of this, people are starting to use the R word.
Asked directly in an interview with (who else?) Fox News whether he was expecting a recession – Trump did what no President should ever do….he didn’t rule it out.
“I hate to predict things like that. There is a period of transition because what we’re doing is very big, we’re bringing wealth back to America. That’s a big thing. And there are always periods of – it takes a little time. It takes a little time.”
Yikes. In the meantime, Trump’s outriders are busy coming up with myriad reasons for the stock market plunge – our favourite of which Senator Tommy Tuberville, claiming the market was “over-bloated” during the Biden Presidency and is simply returning to normal.
Sure, Tommy.
4. Musk blames Ukraine for everything
In an interview with (who else?) Fox News, Elon Musk made a wild and unsubstantiated claim that recent cyberattacks on his Twitter social network were the work of a nation state and had originated in Ukraine.
There is absolutely no evidence that this was the case.
Not only that, a pro-Palestine hacker group has claimed responsibility for the attacks.
Dark Storm took credit for the denial of service attack on “X”, claiming on its Telegram channel: “Twitter has been taken offline by Dark Storm Team.”
5. He also made some pretty wild claims about social security
DOGE’s next target is going to be benefits – what Americans call Social Security.
In the same interview, Musk claimed there is about half a trillion dollars worth of fraud and abuse in the social security bill.
Which would be a pretty neat trick, given the ENTIRE social security bill only comes to around $1.35 trillion.
As in any benefits system, there absolutely will be some fraud, error and abuse in the system – that’s inevitable. Thing is, Musk’s ‘move fast and break things’ approach to rooting out said fraud is going to lead to mistakes. And mistakes mean people – potentially a LOT of people – being unable to make rent, feed their families and get medical treatment. Probably pretty soon.
A lot of those people are going to have voted for Donald Trump, and we imagine they’ll be pretty mad about that.